We can choose to ignore our feelings, let them overwhelm us, or use them as fuel to face complex challenges head-on

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I’ve been worrying about climate collapse for a long time, while it seemed to me that my friends and family went around, undisturbed. But recently, the tide has started to change.

I spoke to my father the other day, after I’d persuaded him to watch David Attenborough’s A Life on Our Planet. Instead of being moved into action, however, he had swung the other way — into apathetic helplessness.

“We’re f***ed,” he sighed, “what can we do?”

It seems to be a common reaction: people root themselves firmly in denial for as long as they can until they can no longer convince themselves that there isn’t a problem. After that, they slide into the opposite end of the spectrum — hopelessness. Whether we’re fine or we’re f***ed, personal responsibility is out the window and there’s no need, or no point, in changing our lifestyles.

But denial and depression are not the only responses to the climate crisis. According to a 2018 survey, 70% of people in the U.S. are worried about climate change, while 2/3 of young people in the UK claim to be experiencing eco-anxiety, defined by the Climate Psychology Alliance as “heightened emotional, mental or somatic distress in response to dangerous changes in the climate system.” (Read my previous article, What is Eco-Anxiety and Should we Try to Cure it?)

So what is Emotional Intelligence and how can it help?

Emotional Intelligence is defined by Six Seconds, the Emotional Intelligence Network, as “being smarter with feelings” — understanding, managing, and navigating our emotions so that we can align with our greater purpose and make the world a better place.

You can try to repress your emotions and live in denial, you can let them overwhelm you to the point of depression or despair, or you can learn to understand and manage the way in which your body responds to threat in order to be the most effective changemaker that you can be.

And if you do believe that it’s too late for us to do anything, wouldn’t you rather face our final days with love, joy and compassion?

Right now, humanity still has the chance to avoid the worst case scenario — which means we’re going to need as many people as possible on their best game. And yet, according to Six Seconds’ 2018 State of the Heart Report, EQ has been on the decline since 2011.

Low emotional intelligence can mean that people can’t manage even small amounts of stress, are more prone to anxiety and depression, and are more at the mercy of sudden changes to their mood. When we’re in “fight or flight mode”, we are far more prone to binary thinking, meaning that everything is good or bad, black or white, us or them — not exactly what we need the most right now, when we are being called to solve complex problems and work together toward solutions.

So how can I improve my EQ?

The first step to increasing your EQ is learning to recognise your emotions. This means starting with the simplest question — how am I feeling right now? What sensations can I feel in my body? Is my breathing shallow or deep? How’s my heart rate? Can I feel tension anywhere?

According to Leslie Davenport in her book Emotional Resiliency in the Era of Climate Change: A Clinician’s Guide, the “fight, flight or freeze” responses to long-term danger may look different from reactions to a sudden, fleeting threat. And the society that we live in can shape the way we respond, too. Instead of fighting, for example, we may engage in comment wars on social media, start pushing our friends and family to read certain articles in order to sway their behaviours, or find ourselves harshly judging others for their decisions. Sound familiar?

If you find yourself judging yourself for your emotions, remember that your emotions evolved to protect you in some way, even those that feel unpleasant.

If you are feeling deep rage, fear or sadness about the climate crisis, remember that these are important emotions that are trying to tell you something. Emotions are vital data. Trying to push them away so that we can “get back to normal” is part of the conflicting messaging of our capitalist society; after all, grief isn’t “productive”, and those processing grief are less likely to shop and work.

But our survival is threatened. Our home, the biosphere of which we are a deeply interconnected part, is suffering - and it is only natural that we feel that.

In The Work that Reconnects, one of the key parts of any workshop is “honouring our pain for the world”. This doesn’t mean that participants are forced to cry, but allowing and holding space for whatever comes up offers a healthy alternative to a world in which we become uncomfortable or awkward around strongly expressed emotions.

Of course, there comes a point where our emotions may not be serving us; while grief can be an appropriate response to the climate crisis, we might need to ask ourselves whether we can call other emotions into play, such as strength, determination, or love — whether we want to help humanity avoid climate disaster, or to help our loved ones adapt to unavoidable changes.

This is where it is important to connect to our “why” — Six Seconds call it the Noble Goal, and see it as a vital part of EQ. Unless we know why we are doing something, whether working towards a goal or trying to improve our EQ, we are likely to feel a disconnection to what we’re doing.

So, if you want to change the way you’re feeling — what is your “why”? Perhaps it’s simply because you dream of a life that’s full of joy. Perhaps you want to help humans to turn this ship around and avoid disaster. Or perhaps you want to make sure the earth has the best chances of regeneration, whether or not we’re still here to see it.

By learning to understand how we are feeling, checking in with our bodies, understanding our fight/flight mechanisms and the stress cycle as well as why we experience certain emotions, we can start to strengthen our EQ. In other circles, this might be called somatic awareness, spiritual self-connection, or any number of things.

Whatever we choose to call it, the idea to me comes back to the same thing — through reconnecting to our bodies, ourselves, and to nature (which in fact encompasses all three) we may have a shot at facing the biggest challenges the human race has ever seen with courage, imagination, and love.

Find out more about Emotional Intelligence here